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Why Tokenization Could Be the Most Important Economic Innovation of Our Lifetime | Bruce Fenton @BruceFenton is a longtime Bitcoin advocate since 2012, securities professional, and one of the early pioneers of tokenized securities. He is the founder and CEO of Chainstone Labs and founder of Atlantic Financial. Alongside Overstock founder @PatrickByrne, Bruce was involved in some of the earliest efforts to bring securities and financial-market infrastructure onto blockchain rails. In 2018, he tokenized equity in his own company, Chainstone Labs, on the Ravencoin blockchain—years before tokenization became one of Wall Street’s biggest narratives. In this episode, Bruce breaks down naked short selling, the plumbing behind traditional securities markets, and why he believes much of the problem is ultimately a ledger problem. We dive into questions such as: Who actually owns the stocks sitting in your brokerage account? How can shares be lent and rehypothecated? What role do brokers, clearing firms, DTCC, and Cede & Co. play in determining who owns what? And could blockchain replace an opaque system of claims and intermediaries with a transparent ledger showing exactly where an asset is and who owns it? We unpack what “tokenized stocks” actually means—and the important distinction between a token that simply gives you exposure to a stock’s price and a security issued natively onchain, where the token itself represents the actual share and the ownership rights that come with it. Bruce discusses how tokenization could allow smaller businesses to tokenize ownership and have their stock traded globally without needing to be listed on a traditional exchange like the NYSE, as well as what a future without KYC could look like. Finally, we get into Wall Street’s embrace of tokenization, the SEC’s evolving approach to tokenized securities, and one of the biggest questions surrounding the future of this technology: who ultimately controls these new financial rails? Remember to subscribe and hit the bell “🔔” icon to get notifications 0:00 Bruce Fenton & Patrick Byrne: Pioneers of Tokenized Securities 3:36 Naked Short Selling Explained 6:28 Who Actually Owns the Stocks in Your Brokerage Account? 12:00 Tokenization Solves Wall Street’s “Ledger Problem” 15:48 What Are You Actually Buying With Robinhood’s Tokenized Stocks? 16:48 Real Tokenized Stocks: When the Token IS the Share 21:46 Tokenization Could Open U.S. Markets to the Entire World 22:52 Why Companies May No Longer Need the NYSE 26:29 Could Tokenized Markets Exist Without KYC? 29:31 Bruce Tokenized Equity on Ravencoin in 2018 30:53 Will Blockchain Make Clearing Houses & DTCC Obsolete? 33:17 Could Tokenization Have Prevented the GameStop Crisis? 38:19 Wall Street Is Embracing Tokenization — Who Gets the Power? 40:20 The SEC’s New Tokenized Securities “Innovation Exemption” 42:57 Why Robinhood’s Tokenized Stocks Don’t Qualify 47:01 Could Everything Eventually Be Tokenized? 51:02 The Dystopian Side of Tokenization: Surveillance & Asset Seizure